Mandera, Kenya: As the border gate opened early in the morning, minibuses dropped off passengers, donkey-led carts trotted through and pedestrians began to cross freely on foot, heading in both directions.

Persistent attacks by al-Shabab, the extremist Somali group that has killed hundreds of people in Kenya in the past two years, have given rise to an ambitious national proposal: an enormous barrier along the 682-kilometre border with Somalia.

“All the problems come from that side,”

said Abdi Billow, 60, a Kenyan of ethnic Somali descent from Mandera, a border town …

This distant, northern corner of Kenya has suffered much of the violence, including attacks on a bus of teachers over Christmas and on workers at a quarry last year, where Christians were separated from Muslims and shot.

Credit: sahanjournal.com

One of the attackers in the assault on a university in eastern Kenya this month, which left almost 150 people dead, also came from here.

“A wall will go a long way in instituting some control of movement,”

said Alex Nkoyo, the ManderaCounty district commissioner.

Kenyan officials say that construction equipment has arrived in Mandera to build what is often called a border wall but is actually envisioned as a barrier of fences, ditches and observation posts that extend from here to the Indian Ocean.

The project has stirred debate here in Mandera, where the two sides are highly interconnected.

Bula Hawa is Mandera’s sister city, right across the border on the Somali side – a border that does not mean much to many residents.

There is also the question of how a border barrier would address the stewing extremism among Kenyans themselves, some of whom have been implicated in deadly attacks, including the assault on the university.

“A security wall will not help,”

said Ishak Aden, 60, a Somali from Bula Hawa.

“The Shabab mix with the people and have a lot of spies.”

When Israel built a wall in response to constant attacks by terrorists, it was quickly labelled an “apartheid wall” by the Israel haters, despite the fact that it was mostly fence and its purpose was to protect its multi-racial, multi-religious population from attacks by terrorists – who ironically do practice religious and racial apartheid. So would the Kenyan wall – which will also separate the diverse Kenyan population from its terrorist neighbours – also be dubbed an apartheid wall, and if not, what is the difference? Very little it would appear, as Kenya’s genocidal neighbour shares an ideology with Hamas and other jihadi groups.

We know that enemies of Israel don’t believe she has the right to defend her people against terrorists. If Kenya goes ahead and builds a separation wall, would it also be subject to a boycott by the Greens, as Israel was in 2010?

GREENS Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon has helped push through a policy to prevent trade between Australia and Israel, and stop Israeli sportspeople and performers coming to Australia.

At its state conference the NSW Greens passed a proposal by consensus for Australians and the Australian Government to

“boycott Israeli goods, trading and military arrangements, and sporting, cultural and academic events as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation and colonisation of Palestinian territory, the siege of Gaza and imprisonment of 1.5 million people and Israel’s institution of a system of apartheid”.

Rhiannon… added:

“The BDS [boycott, divestment and sanction] opposition to all forms of racism, including antisemitism, reflects the principles of the Greens. The campaign is motivated by the universal principles of freedom, justice and equal rights.”

Zionist Federation of Australia president Philip Chester called the policy

“extreme in its antagonism against Israel. Fortunately, the two major parties do not subscribe to a policy that seeks to ostracise and delegitimise Israel. I’m not even sure that all areas of the Greens movement would subscribe to this extreme policy.”

In 2011, the NSW Greens got egg on their face when it was revealed Marrickville Council’s proposed boycott would cost ratepayers $4 million:

IT was the policy that cost Greens candidate Fiona Byrne her bid for a seat in State Parliament.

A council business paper…shows a hit list of a dozen international companies …to either be banned from doing business with council or have their existing contracts cancelled.

They include Hewlett Packard, Chevrolet (Holden), Volvo, Unilever, Motorola ReadyMix and Fulton Hogan concrete companies, which the council claims either

“support Israel‘s military occupation of Palestine or profit from it”.

A further 1800 companies would be banned from future dealings with the council, a list the council admits was downloaded from a pro-Palestinian website.

A financial impact statement … reveals it will have to spend $3 million alone to replace the council’s Hewlett Packard computer hardware and software systems.

It would also need to replace its record management system (operated by Trim) at a cost of $200,000.

The cost of replacing its Motorola hardware equipment has been estimated at $150,000 and a further $250,000 in penalties would apply for cancelling concrete and road paving contracts.

The council is even considering banning the dumping of waste in the local tip because the waste services of the Southern Regional Organisation of Councils is run by Veolia and SITA, which the council presumably also believes profits from what it describes as Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Byrne’s council voted on a Greens sponsored resolution in December 2010 to join the BDS campaign, which was started by 171 Palestinian non-government organisations and unions in 2005. It then asked for a council report on how to implement it.

So might Greens-dominated councils try to boycott trade with Kenya over it’s proposed wall? This trade is nowhere near the scale of Israel/Australia trade (Currently imports from Kenya are worth A$32 million, while exports to Kenya are worth A$80 million). However, to a true radical money means nothing: what matters is finding apartheid in Israel where none exists, as this article demonstrates:

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word ‘apartheid’ meaning ‘apartness’ or ‘separateness’.

Israel was set up in historic Palestine which shares an ancient culture with its neighbours. Arab Jews had lived for many years as part of this culture until the arrival of Zionism.

Israel has created racial segregation using incarceration, a wall, labour exploitation to name some. This is similar to ‘apartheid’ introduced in 1929 in South Africa.

For example, Israel exploits the labour of the Palestinian people in the same way ‘apartheid’ exploited black South African workers.

Israel imports and exploits labour from countries e.g.Sudan. So did Afrikaans apartheid.

Israel goes on military adventures in places like Gaza, bombing and killing civilians.

The Afrikaans in South Africa had ‘pass laws’ that restricted entry to white areas by black south africans. Israel restricts the passage of people with check points and the apartheid wall. Many people in Gaza (set up as an open air prison after the ’48 war) have never been able to visit their brothers, sisters, cousins on the West Bank (occupation set up after the ’67 war).

The Afrikaans government of South Africa sent troops to fight wars against national liberation struggles in the Frontline States like Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe. Since its inception in 1948 Israel has fought wars against Arab states in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq

Israel’s ‘democracy’ is designed to displace Palestinians from their villages and towns. During al Nakbar (the terror) in 1948 Israeli terrorist militias (Stern and Haganah) drove Palestinians from their villages. From 1929-1994 Afrikaans apartheid drove Black South Africans from their homelands and placed people into Bantustans.

It is little wonder that if you go to Gaza the chants of the people are for “Freedom!”

This call to throw out the Zionist elite is little different to the chants of “Freedom!” in Iraq. Freedom from occupation and military intervention. Nor is it dissimilar to the calls made for “Freedom!” in Soweto in South Africa. Or for that matter in Bahrain, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.

Unity has come to the Arab Street – and this is something that will overcome Israeli apartheid in the same way black South Africans overcame Afrikaans Apartheid.

One of the founders of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, set out to create a situation like that which existed in Afrikaans apartheid, where Israelis are the elite, the owners and the rulers, and the Palestinians are the workers. Yet he cloaked his aims in social democracy setting up kibbutz to welcome people from all over the world to visit UN mandated occupation of Palestine.

The Saudis are adding to an existing wall some 965 klms with not a peep from anyone??.

Strange you say? Yes, but then it isn’t Israel.

I started researching a few years back with the view to showing how the ‘Separation Barrier’ built by Israel is just that, and not an “Apartheid Wall”, or one of the many names given to it.

Walls are built to provide some sort of protection and have been built almost since the dawn of Man, be it walled cities, walled compounds or walls to protect an entire country.

We build walls or fences around our homes to keep undesirables out, to keep our children and animals in and out of harms way.

… I see walls, barriers, fences call them what you will, some of which are thousands of kilometres long and which are designed to keep criminals, illegal entrants, terrorists and would be conquerors out, a good idea.

So why in G-d’s name is Israel singled out for being the bad one when all she is trying to do is to protect Her citizens?

You have to see it as nothing else except antisemitism.
Everywhere I looked there was an oversupply of information on Israel’s barrier which is in place for protection, whilst precious little elsewhere on other walls.

Let’s try to fathom out why Israel is the only country whose barrier is called an “Apartheid wall” and why, when there are so many in existence, is Israel’s the only one to cause such a furor?

Security fences have been built around the world for thousands of years, often in disputed territories, with the purpose of protection, disrupting the movement of terrorists, smugglers, and illegal immigrants.

While security fences/barriers are common throughout the world, Israel’s decision in 2003 to construct one was met with protests by the international community and a hearing at the International Court of Justice. No other security barrier has ever been met with such resistance.

Last year it was reported that Egypt was considering building a wall along its border with Gaza and destroying tunnels it claims Hamas uses to conduct terrorist attacks:

In the wake of an attack in northern Sinai, which killed 33 Egyptian soldiers, Cairo has raised the idea of a building an eight-mile barrier along its border with Gaza to deter Islamist terrorists from moving in and out of the Palestinian territory.

“There is a big conspiracy against us,”

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said …blaming “foreign powers” for the atrocity and said Egypt is locked in an “existential war”.

Egypt, which has declared a three-month state of emergency in northern Sinai, also cancelled its planned role as mediator between Israel and Hamas in talks aimed at maintaining a ceasefire that has held since the end of the summer conflict.

The sophisticated terrorist attack – which Egyptian authorities have indicated likely came from Gaza – was launched on Egyptian troops with devastating effect. Old tunnels that had yet to be destroyed by Egyptian forces or newly-dug tunnels that had not been detected were likely used in the attack that combined the use of a suicide bomber on one hand, with rocket propelled grenades and roadside bombs on the other.

… Egypt is facing a serious threat in Sinai from, among others, the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis Islamist terror group, which appears to be using Gaza as a safe haven. The terrorists are believed to be crossing via terror tunnels, even though Egypt has reportedly destroyed more than 1,800 underground passages in a bid to clamp down on Hamas and other terror groups operating there.

“I understand [Egypt] would like to create a buffer zone where there are no houses and no vegetation.”

– Zvi Mazel, former Israeli Ambassador to Egypt

Hamas, which has launched thousands of rockets into Israel from Gaza’s northern border in the last year, has also sought to strike a blow at al-Sisi’s forces as payback for the former Egyptian military leader’s overthrowing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ parent organization.

Following the attack, the Rafah crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt was closed immediately and will reportedly remain closed indefinitely. Hamas leaders have reportedly stated that Gaza will “explode” if the Rafah crossing is not re-opened quickly.

While the southern crossing into Egypt is closed, other border crossings with Israel remain open. Humanitarian and trade supplies are being delivered by Israel to the more than 1.8 million residents of Gaza whose Hamas government fought a 50-day war against them this summer.

The success of Israel’s controversial West Bank separation barrier in lowering suicide attacks on the Jewish state by as much as 90 percent, appears to have not gone unnoticed by Egypt which is now facing a comparable problem from Gaza-based Palestinian terrorists..

“I understand [Egypt] would like to create a buffer zone where there are no houses and no vegetation.”

Mazel noted that to do so, Egypt would have to expel 100,000 Bedouins from northern Sinai to establish such a zone.

Mazel believes the “foreign powers” Al Sisi referred to as fomenting attacks launched from Gaza and funding terror operations in Sinai are Qatar, Turkey and Iran.

“He knows better than anyone else who is responsible for encouraging these terrorists.The terrorists in Sinai constitute the threat, but someone is giving them money, and the money has most likely come from those countries.”

It remains to be seen if Kenya’s wall is labelled an Apartheid Wall. What is clear is that the international community needs to recognize that a sovereign country has the right, indeed the duty, to protect citizens from terrorists. Yes, and that includes Israel!

Leon, perhaps Christine Milne resigned because she had a crisis of conscience, realising that the Greens were occupying land that was ethnically cleansed and illegally occupied… on the other hand, perhaps she resigned because she was a crap leader and her fellow Greenies, in an internecine battle, wanted her gone.

I think she resigned because she was getting ‘Past her used by date’ and knew Sarah Hanson Brown was sniffing around with strong desires to lead. She also knows that Hanson Brown is a rabid leftie who would have totally destroyed the party. So she did an undercover deal with a guy with his head screwed on.

They will not be blamed because the leftwing and arabs have not decided (yet) to replace the kenyan population with an arab one and consequently need not to blackmail this nation as they do with Israel.

Robert, I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time until Arab imperialism prevails in Kenya. This will lead to the destruction of indigenous culture and religions, as has happened elsewhere in Africa. It’s hard to believe now that countries like Egypt and Afghanistan were once not Muslim, but most traces of previous cultures have been eliminated.

L:et’s hope it doesn’t happen in Europe, but with the EU, the UN and European governments so weak, it’s not reassuring.